Argument Selection and Alternations in German VP-Idioms

In this paper I argue that inflection class membership among the so-called ‘primary’ verbs in Lithuanian, which has always been considered to be extremely idiosyncratic, is at least partly predictable from the verb’s semantics. The most important semantic parameters responsible for inflection class assignment are agentivity of the verb’s highest ranking participant (thus most transitive and agentive intransitive ‘primary’ verbs share the same morphological features whereas nonagentive intransitives fall into another inflectional class) and the inherent aspectual properties of the verb (intransitive verbs denoting atelic and telic processes fall into different classes). These semantic features are cross-linguistically recognized as relevant for ‘unaccusativity’ or ‘split intransitivity’; thus Lithuanian inflectional morphology may be subsumed under a typologically well-established pattern.